I have hit zones during practice and play where the senses all come together and the CB comes off of the tip just perfectly, but it is seemingly short lived and the old inconsistent stroke patterns resurface. Tell me, what is stroke timing in your opinion? Does it change with length of shot, with speed of stroke and/or with english? Lastly, how do you drill for purifying this aspect of your personal stroke? Kinnister's #1 practice shot is one I know of, but it surely leaves a lot out when all the variables are added in, i.e. spin, hard follow, etc.

When it works, it is magic. How would it be refined and made as consnstent as possible? Maybe it's a natural thing for some, I dunno. TIA...sid

dave

09-14-2005, 04:34 PM

I am not sure what you mean by "stroke timing". But, sometimes when I am working on the pace of my stroke, the pattern of the individual increments of my stroke mechanics and the overall pace of movement around the table and shot setup; I'll practice with an old fashioned metronome running in the background to help develop a consistent rhythm.I prefer not to have my rhythm influenced by outside factors such as the opponents speed of play, pressure etc. I think it helps a bit.

Sid_Vicious

09-14-2005, 07:45 PM

To me it is something different than the customary "thru the CB", the tip seems to live in sound and unison, sending the CB on it's path, the actual contact moment has it's own report to the senses of movement, sound and feel. It is difficult to explain, and maybe I am going geeky on y'all, that's why I posted the stroke timing to see if it already has someone's attention...sid

nhp

09-15-2005, 03:56 AM

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote Sid_Vicious:</font><hr> I have hit zones during practice and play where the senses all come together and the CB comes off of the tip just perfectly, but it is seemingly short lived and the old inconsistent stroke patterns resurface. Tell me, what is stroke timing in your opinion? Does it change with length of shot, with speed of stroke and/or with english? Lastly, how do you drill for purifying this aspect of your personal stroke? Kinnister's #1 practice shot is one I know of, but it surely leaves a lot out when all the variables are added in, i.e. spin, hard follow, etc.

When it works, it is magic. How would it be refined and made as consnstent as possible? Maybe it's a natural thing for some, I dunno. TIA...sid <hr /></blockquote>

Sid, watch alot of videos of pros playing and pay attention to their stroke speed rythm. They usually keep the same rythm every shot no matter what. The only thing that changes is the final execution stroke, and although they hit it with different speeds all the times, it still sometimes looks like they are hitting it the same speed every time...even though they are not lol.

JohnnyP

09-15-2005, 07:57 PM

I mounted a couple of accelerometers to the butt end of my cue, and fed the outputs to a laptop pc. This let me check the straightness of my stroke, as well as my stroke timing.

In the screen shots below, the red trace shows the stroke acceleration, while the green trace shows side to side movement.

For reference, zero "g" is an imaginary horizontal line through the middle of the display.

Ideally, the tip will strike the cue ball at maximum velocity. By definition, the acceleration would be zero, since the speed is neither increasing or decreasing.

The entire forward stroke takes only about a third of a second. In the screen shots, the contact point is near the center of the display, and can be identified by the high frequency noise on the green trace.

The screen shot labeled "good stroke" shows that I had a straight stroke, but I hit the cue ball late, since the contact point is after the red trace goes below the zero g reference line, so my stick was slowing down.

The screen shot labeled "bad stroke" shows I swerved the cue, but hit the ball closer to the right time.

Note that the time difference is about 50 milliseconds. Not much, but it could be the difference between a crisp hit and a mushy one

I haven't used the setup enough to see if I can train myself to hit the ball at the correct time. Stroking straight is always a challenge.

The first one is "good stroke", because it's straight, even though I hit it late.

The second one is "bad stroke", because I swerved the cue. My timing was better, though.

SPetty

09-16-2005, 03:52 PM

This is the coolest thing I've seen in awhile. Thanks.

nhp

09-16-2005, 05:19 PM

Sid since you are focusing on stroke timing etc., pay attention to your wrist and how it has an effect on your stroke timing. This is very important from what I've discovered.

Fran Crimi

09-16-2005, 05:20 PM

Definitely very cool. /ccboard/images/graemlins/cool.gif

Fran

Jal

09-17-2005, 09:56 PM

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote JohnnyP:</font><hr> I mounted a couple of accelerometers...<hr /></blockquote>

Thanks loads sharing that. I've done some work trying to figure out the consequences of differently shaped force functions on cue speed and power efficiency, but didn't have much of a clue as to what an actual real life stroke profile looked like. This is terrific! (Dr. Dave has done similar measurements too. See his website.)

It would be very interesting to compare the stroke profiles of all sorts of players, from relative beginners to advanced, to see how it evolves with experience. I'd bet a lot of people would be willing to contribute their strokes just to see how it looks and compares to others.

Jim

JohnnyP

09-18-2005, 09:01 AM

If you look at the Green trace in the second photo, you can see that I pulled the cue to one side before the hit.

After the hit, you can see oscillations in the Green trace. This means that the shaft is vibrating, due to an off center hit.

The shaft will also vibrate when English is intentionally applied, but the Green trace should be flat before the hit (unless you are intentionally swooping the cue).

Here's a photo of a shaky stroke, and it looks like I got it back in line before the hit, since the Green trace is not oscillating after the hit.

http://www.jandssafeguard.com/Pool/StrokeDetector/ShakyStroke.jpg

Fran Crimi

09-18-2005, 09:35 AM

I would love to see you set this up at a pro tournament and get as many pros as you could to do it. It would be really interesting to see the various players' stroke patterns.

Great work!

Fran

DickLeonard

09-18-2005, 10:09 AM

Sid, One,two,three then Rock, four,five,six then Roll. I have always maintained that playing great pool was a Dance Routine. It had to be Choregraphed to an Inner Dance Beat that the player had to program into his Inner Being.

I had gone to the Worlds Championships at the Commodore Hotel in NYC in the early 60s. The most important discovery I made was that when a player started playing bad you could see him losing his Body Rythymn and Players who were playing Great were actually in a Dance Mode.

Now with IPODS it is possible to program your Inner Being with help of calming music, no Heavy Metal Please.####

DickLeonard

09-18-2005, 10:13 AM

Fran I think that Pro Golfers have been using something similar to this for years. Tracing their golf swing I didn't think it would come to Pool. ####